Thursday, December 6, 2018

How Everyday Language Harms People with Disabilities

At the end of an interview for a prestigious residency, I mention my physical access needs, making it clear that I can walk and manage some stairs.

“We’ve had wheelchair-bound fellows before,” my interviewer tells me.

As
soon as I hear her say “wheelchair-bound,” I feel an all-too-familiar
hollow in my stomach. It is as if I’ve been punched there. It is how I
know a description of disabled people is awry.

I
could tell her that “wheelchair-bound” is an inaccurate term, pointing
out that no wheelchair user I know is bound to a wheelchair, that every
wheelchair user I know has developed techniques and support to transfer
into a bed, or onto a toilet. But, knowing that this is an important
interview, I remain silent, which leaves my stomach feeling rather sore.

I feel this far too often. Many friends use the word “lame” to describe something, or someone, stupid. According to the Oxford Living Dictionaries,
the definition of “lame” actually means “unable to walk without
difficulty as the result of an injury or illness affecting the leg or
foot.” But, over time, “lame” has come to connote something or someone
stupid.

It is not only friends who use “lame” but also some well-known, liberal luminaries, such as Nobel Prize-winning economist and New York Times columnist Paul Krugman. In the 2012 article “An Unserious Man,”
Krugman describes Representative Paul Ryan’s response to criticisms of
his Medicare plan as “incredibly lame.” I’ve cringed when MSNBC’s Rachel
Maddow spouts “lame” from her broadcasting desk. In a 2018 Slate article, Ben Mathis-Lilley uses “lame”in his description of the political messaging of Democratic Party leaders Nancy Pelosi and Charles Schumer.

Thus,
the connection between disability and stupidity, between a physical
trait and intellectual ability, lives in our popular lexicon. Why should
this matter?

We
each attach a unique meaning to what we hear. We internalize language
and interpret it based on our own experiences, from the past or the
present, from our mood in the moment. Words are first processed in the
limbic brain, our emotional center, before meaning is made through our
rationalizing frontal cortex. Kick off the wrong emotion and all
intended meaning may be lost.

The
language we use reveals assumptions that we usually don’t realize. For
example, disabled students are given “special education,” and disabled
people are seen as having “special needs.” But there is nothing special
about such education. The methods of learning might be different; there
might be a need for certain accommodations. But how could the needs of
the planet’s approximately one billion disabled people be called special?

It
wasn’t until the 1970s that millions of students in the United States,
as a matter of law, gained the right to receive the education they
deserved. The Rehabilitation Act of 1973 required schools to make accommodations for disabled students after centuries of isolating and ignoring them. In 1975, the Education for All Handicapped Children Act enforced
the right of children with disabilities to receive a free and
appropriate education. There is nothing special about a “free
appropriate education,” but many are still begrudged this legal right.
If we didn’t call this “free appropriate education” special, might such
rights be granted more easily?

How
many times have you called someone a moron? When doing so, you are
using a word coined by U.S. psychologist and eugenicist Henry Goddard.
Goddard took “moron” from the Greek root moros,
meaning dull or foolish. In true eugenic fashion, Goddard promulgated
the idea that there was a correlation between low intelligence and
criminality. To Goddard, so-called morons were a threat to the American
social fabric.

In
the first decades of the 20th century, the U.S. government oversaw the
involuntary sterilization of 60,000 developmentally disabled Americans.
In the Supreme Court’s 1927 ruling on Buck v. Bell,
Oliver Wendell Holmes asserted that these sterilizations did not
violate the due process clause of the 14th Amendment. In his decision,
the much-lauded justice wrote the infamous line “Three generations of
imbeciles are enough.” The ruling has never been expressly overturned.

When Goddard coined “moron,” the number of immigrants arriving in the United States was at record levels. JoElla Straley writes for NPR’s “Code Switch” that, “for his part, Goddard wanted to ensure there were no ‘morons’ among them.”

Everyone, it seems, is calling the procession a “caravan.” The journalist Luke O’Neil has pointed out
that the word’s Persian roots conjure the image of “people trekking
across the desert with camels (ie terrorists of course).” It is less an
organized trek than it is an “exodus,” a spontaneous movement of
thousands who are fleeing a place more than they are pursuing a
destination.

Would
changing the language we use change how those deemed “other” are seen
and treated? “The choice of each word may make the difference between
piercing complacency or suffering the fate of indifference, between
creating alignment or sowing the seeds of dissent,” Talerman observed in
our conversation. “Language is the greatest tool we have for connecting
with people.”

Inaccurate
words deny that wheelchair users exist independent of their
wheelchairs, assume that those of us who are physically disabled are
stupider than non-disabled folks, begrudge the civil rights of disabled
students, endanger those who are erroneously feared (like the migrants
walking in the so-called caravan), and imply motivations that are
instead mere projection. Inaccurate words not only sow misunderstanding
but also dehumanize, which is probably why they are used — consciously
or not — in the first place.

This
is neither a matter of political correctness nor of hurt feelings.
Underlying these words are gross misunderstandings and suspect
motivations, which lead to wrongheaded policy, denial of legal rights,
and mistreatment of those with perceived differences.

It’s
no wonder that when I hear such words, my body revolts as forcefully as
if I have been punched. Seemingly innocuous words can be just as
violating as a fist. And sometimes they have just as cruel
consequences — sometimes even longer-lasting ones.

We
need to educate ourselves about the myriad words and phrases used to
undermine the accurate description of disabled lives. We need to refrain
from ablesplaining when those of us who are disabled point out these
inaccurate words. We need to interrupt the use of such words, pointing
out the inaccuracy in what is being said. We all need to think more
clearly about what we say, as well as about what the words we use
actually mean.

My
residency interviewer’s words silenced me into inaction. In that
situation, I didn’t feel empowered to interrupt and educate her about
her inaccurate words. But my non-disabled husband did write to Paul
Krugman about his use of the word “lame.” As far as we know, Krugman has
not used the word since.

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